Colorful Bedrooms: Choose Your Perfect Palette

A dazzling array of color in the bedroom

Slide 1 Of Colorful Bedrooms: Choose Your Perfect Palette

Purple Geometric Bedroom

Known for his use of bold colors, designer Jamie Drake decks out this bedroom suite in delectable shades of fashionable fuchsia. A lavish silk moiré wraps the room. The bed, covered in a velvet contemporary pattern, gets a traditional finish with brass nailhead trim.

Walls the color of palm fronds add a tropical touch in this Florida master bedroom. The room charms with ultrafeminine details, like a Wilton carpet strewn with roses, floral prints by a local artist, and a collection of pottery plates.

“Especially in a room with bright or bold colors, you need to create contrast with the crispness of white,” says designer Betsy Speert.

Designer Colette van den Thillart transformed her Toronto home into a lovely “Frenchified” space. The lilac-and-white master suite was inspired by Canada’s northern light. The headboard was custom designed by Colette. A Belgian-oak settee upholstered with faux fur huddles with tufted slipper chairs in the luxurious sitting area. Both pretty and utilitarian, the complementary lilac-and-white draperies are backed with blackout lining to guarantee restful nights.

Strongly colored walls, a berry ceiling, and sisal carpet make a lush setting for this bedroom. A mirror substitutes for a window behind the bed. Designer and homeowner Michael Connors found several wonderful items at a Parisian flea market, including the map of Paris circa-1734 and the French Art Deco leather smoking chairs.

A guest bedroom is warmed by brown ticking fabric on the walls and brown toile draperies. English transferware hangs above the bamboo headboard. A bronze Chinese incense burner floats on an acrylic stand in the corner, and an antique magnifying glass sits on a side table.

Cream walls and restrained decorating allows blue hues to pop in this Louisiana master suite. Graphic artwork and clean lines on the bed linens lend a contemporary feel. French doors open up to a deep Southern porch overlooking the bayou.

This ultra-feminine master bedroom glows in raspberry, tempered by a taupe glaze applied in a crosshatch pattern. Designer Jennifer Flanders used an antique bed as inspiration for the shaped headboard tufted in hot pink wool. Instead of the expected stark white, the bedroom trim was painted in taupe to add depth and more warmth. Newly constructed armoires faced with mirrors house clothes and accessories.

See more from this room and tips from the designer on the following slide.

In a corner of the master bedroom, an armchair designed by Jennifer draws attention with its nailhead decoration.

Color Tips from Designer Jennifer Flanders

• Go beyond tried and true. Instead of having go-to colors, Jennifer prefers to tackle new color combinations for each project. “Not only does it keep the work interesting, but it allows me to give something unique to each client,” she says. She does, however, use one trim color repeatedly—Benjamin Moore’s White Dove, which, she explains, is neither too bright nor too creamy, just the perfect white. • Introduce color surprises. Trying a new wall color is the easiest way to change the look of a room. But why stop there? Jennifer advises painting the moldings white and suggests painting the inside of bookshelves a contrasting color. That offers opportunities for more interest and drama.
• Think balance. Mix light with dark and large scale with small scale to create a room of ease and comfort. Bold colors and patterns should be evenly distributed throughout a space, not clumped together in one area.

Tropical themes abound in this Hawaiian home. Antique Victorian beds join an Eastlake parlor table in this guest room. Bright chartreuse stands out against the dark woods. Prints hanging on the green plaster walls are by artist John Kelly.

A sweet blue guest bedroom takes a formal turn with a regal brass chandelier and a checked canopy that adds height to the tufted white headboard. The pillows and duvet are covered in a pretty blue-and-white damask print.

Rich yellow hues warm this bedroom, while the flower-and-scroll Italian linen makes the most of the snug space. “I like this print because it doesn’t have an identifiable flower image,” says designer Cecilie Starin. “Representational prints tend to grow tiresome. This one has elegant movement and doesn’t depict anything specific.”

The walls of this bedroom were given depth with an unusual mulberry-pulp wallpaper that resembles stone blocks. Popular during the 1930s, the paper’s imperfections enhance the interplay between rough and refined textures and furnishings.

A charged palette of glossy blue and orange drives this showhouse bedroom, designed by Kendall Wilkinson. An unexpected Lucite headboard fades into a striking and graceful mural of a white tree with sparrows by decorative painter Shirley Robinson. The pristine white bed linens are accentuated with a black-and-white geometric motif on the pillows.

The room’s lustrous sheen paves the way for other shiny elements, like this quartet of teal patent leather chairs surrounding a Lucite table. Pagoda-shaped valences above the windows echo the tangerine-and-teal chinoiserie toile itself.

This bedroom is ultra-green—both in its color palette and eco-friendly, allergen-sensitive materials. Designer Trudy Dujardin used a low-VOC paint for the strié pattern on the walls; cotton drapery fabrics and wool carpeting contain no added finishes; the organic mattress is made from natural latex, wool, and organic cotton.

Originally a Beirut convent, French-born architect Annabel Karim Kassar transformed this hundred-year-old building into a light-filled family home. In the master bedroom, bright colors and Middle Eastern patterns command attention. Hand-painted wallpaper fills the niche behind a steel bed. The encaustic floor tiles are original to the house.

Soft sage and golden details create a soothing palette for this master bedroom. Colefax & Fowler “Fuchsia” wallpaper inspired the light color scheme. The gold-leaf canopy bed was created by homeowner and designer Annie Selke for her home furniture line. The bed linens are from Pine Cone Hill.

The owner of this home wanted to create Scandinavian style in her German abode. The lilac-painted master bedroom takes its interesting shape from the home’s thatched roof. A French bedcover, chair upholstered in old linen, and pine table painted by the homeowner complete the furnishings.

A gorgeous gold- and olive-colored guest room provides the perfect haven on the set of the 2007 film “The Nanny Diaries.” Silk embroidered fabrics, a French bed, and floral wallpaper offer a soothing place of respite in this otherwise chaotic fictional household.

The sky’s the limit for designer Sara Story. It’s where she drew inspiration for her vivid bedroom’s hand-painted wallpaper in extreme orange, patterned with a chinoiserie-style mural of birds dancing among lacy tree branches. Instead of a traditional blue background for her renderings of trees, Story re-created the sky at sunset, that colorful point in the evening when blue yields to a spectrum of warm yellow to orange, giving the chinoiserie design a playful tone.

On a bed topped with embroidered linens, an orange Hermes throw nods to the iconic shade that saturates the luxury brand’s boxes and blends with the intense color of the walls.